Car accidents can be frightening for a number of reasons. The experience itself can be traumatizing. They can lead to injuries.
But they can also lead to financial difficulties from those injuries.
You might think that if you’re not bleeding or if you don’t have broken bones, that you’re fine. But a car accident can cause several types of injuries, some of which may not be obvious right away.
Injuries might not always be obvious because:
For this reason, you should always get checked out after an accident. Let’s look a bit closer at these phenomena and the major financial reason you shouldn’t wait to get checked out.
Car accidents, like any traumatic event, can initiate the body’s fight or flight response. What that means is that your adrenaline spikes, which can make you feel okay even if you’re not.
After all, if you have to flee or fight, focusing on injuries won’t help you survive.
Rarely is that a necessary consideration after a collision, but it doesn’t stop your body’s physiological response.
There are may risk factors for soft injuries, though, like whiplash. Those include anything from the nature of the accident to how much stress your neck muscles carry. More than 2 million people suffer from whiplash each year in the US alone.
Whiplash is one of those injuries that you might not feel right away because of adrenaline, and because of the second reason.
Even after your adrenaline has leveled out again, you still might not feel any pain. That’s because muscle pains and injuries to other soft tissues don’t always manifest right away.
If you go to the gym, you might feel tired after a grueling workout, but the muscle soreness will probably be at its worst two days after. Similarly, if you sprain your ankle, it might look okay at first, but a few hours after the sprain might produce significant swelling.
For collisions, you don’t want to wait until you feel the pain to get evaluated. You should get checked out even if you feel okay right after the accident.
There are several reasons for this. For one, if you do sprain something, you might be able to get ahead of the swelling by using ice packs. If you get an injury like whiplash, a heat pack might help.
If you’re injured in an accident and you go to the doctor two weeks later complaining of pains, how does an insurer know that those pains are directly related to the accident?
They don’t. For that reason, they might delay or even worse–deny your claim for medical coverage.
That could put a financial burden on you that will only be an insult to injury.
If you’ve been in an accident and haven’t been evaluated, or if you have more questions about collision-related injuries, please contact us right away.
